IN BRIEF

The cover of the latest issue of Time magazine features two individuals. One is a little Honduran girl crying while juxtaposed and looking down at her is President Donald Trump. The caption reads, “Welcome to America.” The clear message being sent by the leftist magazine is that this poor little girl is alone, separated from her parents because of Trump’s zero-tolerance illegal immigration policy. In announcing its cover, Time tweeted “TIME’s new cover: A reckoning after Trump’s border separation policy: What kind of country are we?”

However, as has become all too common with the Leftmedia narrative, there is one massive problem with Time’s cover — that little Honduran girl was never separated from her mother. In fact, after leaving the rest of her family, her mother had paid a human trafficker $6,000 to smuggle them across the U.S. border, where they were subsequently arrested by Border Patrol agents. Border Patrol agent Carlos Ruiz explained, “We were patrolling the border. It was 10 o'clock at night. We asked her to set the kid down in front of her, not away from her — she was right in front of her … so we can properly search the mother.” Ruiz added, “So the kid immediately started crying as she set her down. I personally went up to the mother and asked her, ‘Are you doing OK? Is the kid OK?’ and she said, ‘Yes. She’s tired and thirsty. It’s 11 o'clock at night.’”

Was the minor separated from her mother later? No, both mother (Sandra) and child (Yanela Denise) were detained at a family residential center in Texas together. The Daily Mail tracked down Sandra’s husband still living in Honduras. He explained that his wife desired to go to the U.S. to seek a “better future,” but that he did not support the idea. Sandra left behind three other children on her trek to seek asylum in the U.S. But, if she was seeking asylum, why did she not go to a port of entry and do so legally? Because Sandra is a repeat offender. Back in 2013, she was arrested and deported for illegally crossing the border. It would appear that this illegal alien had no grounds for claiming asylum, thus her decision to break U.S. law. This may be more common than the Leftmedia would care to report.

Clearly, none of these facts matter to Time, for the agenda being pushed is open borders. The powerful emotive image of a crying little girl offered too much potential as a tantalizing piece of propaganda to be ignored. And if the truth gets out, no matter — it’s the immediate emotional impact that moves people. It’s become common practice for the Leftmedia to package the news not to inform but to disinform. And Time’s coverage is one of the most egregious examples to date.

So, as the saying goes, don’t believe the hype. Discretion and reasoned inquiry must precede any acceptance of news from any media source. Blindly trusting a news report simply because of the notoriety of the media organization is foolishly naive. Thankfully, a growing majority of Americans are recognizing just how biased mainstream media has become.

Is there anything as American as a pistol-packing pastor who takes out an armed carjacker and then tends a wounded man until medics arrived? That’s exactly what happened in Washington state Tuesday when a local pastor — who is also a fire department lieutenant, EMT and trained concealed carry permit holder — shot and killed an attacker at a Walmart. The assailant fired shots in the store before heading to the parking lot to attempt a carjacking. He shot and wounded a male driver before turning his attention to trying to steal a second car. That’s when the pastor stepped in and shot him. He likely saved the life of the wounded driver.

As The Resurgent’s Peter Heck reminds us, “There’s that famous scene from Mel Gibson’s ‘The Patriot’ where the local preacher, played by actor René Auberjonois, comes down out of the pulpit to grab a musket and join the American patriots in the revolution. When congregants react shocked at the sight of a rifle-toting pastor, the preacher tips his cap and says, ‘A shepherd must tend his flock, and at times fight off the wolves.’”

Editor’s Note

Charles Krauthammer, the intellectual giant conservative commentator and Pulitzer Prize winner, has died at 68.

We’ve carried Krauthammer’s columns (syndicated by The Washington Post) for the last decade, and he’s been a valuable part of our Right Opinion roster. He was also well-known as a Fox News commentator. But he didn’t start out on our side. Krauthammer was the former editor of New Republic and he was a speechwriter for Walter Mondale. Who knew that Ronald Reagan would eventually win over even his opponent’s staff?

FEATURED ANALYSIS

There’s an obvious question asked by, well, everyone in the wake of President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this week that he has directed the Pentagon to create a “Space Force”: Do we really need an independent space force? Furthermore, what drove this decision to create what will be the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces? The answers have several moving parts, including politics, well-grounded grievances and doctrinal considerations.

The political piece is easy: Every legislator or bureaucrat with a space-related industrial sector has a constituent “rice bowl” they want to fill. As always, a good forensic decryption aid for issues like these is this: Follow the money.

As for the grievances and drivers behind the decision, last year, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Service Committee, spoke at the National Defense Forum. He flatly stated, “What we have found is that space has not been able to get the attention it needs, culturally or resource wise.” He was taking aim at the Air Force, which — at least in his estimation — gives space short-shrift. “The Air Force’s number one mission culturally is air dominance, as it should be,” Rogers said. “Space is a subordinate mission and that’s no longer acceptable.”

He further noted in the previous year that none of the 37 Air Force colonel promotion candidates to the rank of brigadier general were space professionals, and that out of 450 hours of required courses within the Air Force’s professional military education curriculum, only two are devoted to national security in space. Rogers likened the current state of space power to that of the Air Force in its nascent stage under the Army, saying it requires a similar solution.

From a doctrinal standpoint, opinions about separating space from the Air Force’s mission are all over the map. Some national defense strategists believe space power remains simply a logical extension of air power and thus should remain within the Air Force. Others note space is trans-service: All military branches use space and have a vested interest in space not “belonging” to any one service. Still others believe that development of a truly independent space force is needed to spur the kind of growth that rapidly sprang from the minds of its doctrine developers once the Air Force became an independent service component.

Clearly, doctrine developers and Pentagon planners don’t speak with one voice on the topic, so searching for the answer about whether a separate space force should exist is likely pointless.

One thing is clear, however: America’s adversaries — especially China and Russia — are challenging its dominant role in space. Stealing U.S. technologies, among others, China has made alarming advances in counter-space technology, with the end goal of denying U.S. access to space capabilities if a conflict between the two nations arises. So as Trump wrestles Beijing over trade and North Korean nukes, the Space Force may be one more chess move.

As to the ultimate wisdom of President Trump’s decision, the truth will become known over the long term. We’re almost certain to see a robust body of “space doctrine” and new technologies develop from this initiative. Let’s hope these future assets to our national security outweigh the bureaucracy associated with having another military mouth to feed at the budget trough. For now, however, we can still hear the echoes ringing out from the rally in Duluth, Minnesota, which the president just visited: “Space Force, Space Force, Space Force, Space Force!”

OPINION IN BRIEF

David Harsanyi: “I’m a pretty liberal guy on immigration — open to more asylum seekers, bigger immigration, more temporary workers, etc. But I’m not a huge fan of chaos. And I suspect I’m not alone. Yet we have Democrats and activists calling for the elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We have a Democratic Party unwilling to make any compromise on the issue even when we’re faced with a surge of migrant children. As Gabriel Malor pointed out in The Federalist this week, the proposed legislation cosponsored by every Senate Democrat was so carelessly written that it would prevent ‘federal law enforcement agencies almost anywhere inside the United States from arresting and detaining criminals who are parents having nothing to do with unlawfully crossing the border and seeking asylum.’ It’s not healthy for the country or the people who come here seeking a better life for them to be thrown into a system that doesn’t work. Nor, as we are increasingly seeing in Europe, is it politically tenable to rely on emotionalism as a means of ignoring all law.”

SHORT CUTS

Pathetic parting shot: “Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist and intellectual provocateur who championed the muscular foreign policy of neoconservatism that helped lay the ideological groundwork for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, died June 21 at 68.” —The Washington Post’s Adam Bernstein in a “straight news” obituary

Gross hyperbole: “This policy of family separation reminds us of the cattle cars of Nazi Germany when children were separated from their parents and marched to supposed showers. It reminds us of the Japanese internment camps. It reminds us of all the darkest periods.” —Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)

Open borders: “No, it would not be better to build a wall. A wall is expensive, ineffective [and] immoral. … It’s not better to build a wall. What’s better to do is to build a bridge.” —Nancy Pelosi

Braying Jenny: “The president’s executive order seeks to replace one form of child abuse with another. Instead of protecting traumatized children, the president has directed his attorney general to pave the way for the long-term incarceration of families in prison-like conditions.” —Nancy Pelosi

Hypocrisy alert! “I hope that while some may have tried to politicize it, I hope that was not the case. … I’m not going to take any bait on what one partisan said or the other. … People will say this and that. The fact is, the reality is: The children are there and we need to address the problem.” —Nancy Pelosi in 2014, back when child detention under Barack Obama wasn’t as politically useful as an issue

Village Idiots: “ICE has strayed so far away from its mission. It is supposed to be here to keep Americans safe but what it has turned into, frankly, is a terrorist organization of its own that is terrorizing people who are coming to this country.” —actress and political aspirant Cynthia Nixon

And last… “Democrats don’t want to detain anyone for any reason. They want open borders. Period. … No matter what the president does in the name of compassion, the Left will attack him because it will settle for nothing less than 100% ‘catch and release’ until the job of fundamentally transforming America is finished.” —Gary Bauer

Join our editors and staff in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. We also humbly ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Nate Jackson, Managing Editor
Mark Alexander, Publisher

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